So the earth did.
The explosion centered on the pyramid, on a scale not seen. Nee meteors battered the planet long before life existed. A tidal wave more than a mile high spread outward from the center of the Atlantic, so powerful it circled the entire globe core slowly subsiding. As far as Atlantis itself, the thirteen islands were gone so completely there was no indication there had even been land in the center of the mighty ocean, no ruins for later civilizations to find.
CHAPTER ONE
Bone-cold wind blew down from the white covered peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Sweeping across the High Plains. Nestled in the valley that held the Greasy Grass River, known as the Little Big Horn to the whites, were two-dozen lodges of the Lakota Sioux. They were somewhat protected from the wind by the surrounding bluffs. But small wind devils still swirled about the lodges. It was the time of the Moon-of-Frost-in-the-Lodge, January, and only dire necessity would cause one to be outside before the sun rose.
The woman known as Nahimana, wife of the medicine man Crazy Horse, pulled the frozen rawhide flap to her lodge entrance aside and peered out into the dark. Not just the cold. But also, the foreboding darkness caused her to pause before exiting, as she knew she must. She glanced once over her shoulder at her sleeping husband, and then silently left the tent, one hand cradled underneath her swollen belly, the other bolding a small leather pouch with an eagle feather tied to the binding. She had a small buffalo robe draped over one shoulder but wore only a simple one-piece dress made of deer hide. Her teeth were already chattering, the wind cutting through e thin garment and swirling up her bare legs.
She wove her way through the lodges toward the cottonwoods next to the river. Tethered ponies watched her, gathered tightly together for protection from the cold. Even the logs the village used for warning were quiet, recognizing her cent, content to watch from their snowy havens underneath bushes.
Nahimana passed the edge of the village and made her way into the cottonwoods. There was barely enough starlight and moonlight for her to avoid bumping into a tree. She stopped abruptly as the ground suddenly dropped off, telling her she had reached the bank of the Greasy Grass. With great difficulty, she slid down the steep four-foot riverbank to a small shoal consisting of pebbles and sand. Ice framed both sides of the flowing water for about two feet, leaving a free-flowing center channel. The river was not deep, a few feet at best in the center.
Looking up, Nahimana saw the uncountable stars overhead, twinkling in the clear night sky in the space between the bare branches from the trees on each bank that framed her view. She felt very small and alone. All her visions seemed foolish now. How could she — and the child inside of her who now wanted to come out-matter in light of such vastness? Why should she and her child be chosen, as she knew they had been? And chosen for what fate?
Her child-the thought made her pause. It was tradition for a woman to leave the village to give birth, but not one scrupulously followed, especially when the weather was so dangerous. However, she had another reason to give birth away from the eyes of others. Although she had not slept with another man beside her husband, she was worried about what had grown inside her. Slightly more than eight moons ago, in the Moon of Shedding Ponies, she had awoken in great pain while Crazy Horse was off on a bunt. The dogs were barking loudly as if a bear had wandered into the camp. It was just few weeks past the night; she knew she had conceived with her husband. Her hair had crackled as if a summer storm were passing overhead. But such storms were still a few months off. Her abdomen was wracked with pain, and she’d feared she’d lost the child. But examining herself, she’d found a small, fresh cut on her stomach.
While warriors scoured the camp, she’d covered the wound with a poultice. She knew in the way she had always known such things, that something had been done to her. What, she had no clue, but she feared for her child.
The next night she’d had a dream. She “saw” her son leading their people to a great victory over the white skins, their soldiers falling into camp and her son killing many. But for some reason she couldn’t pin down, she’d felt no elation at the vision. Since that night, she’d had the same dream many times, of soldiers falling into camp and her son defeating them, but she shared it with no one. Because in concert with that vision, she had another. One of a dark-haired man with blue eyes who was with the white skin soldiers. This man disturbed her greatly, because she knew he was connected to her and also knew his fate. But still he charged into battle.
She also had dreams of skulls. Not the white bleached skulls of the dead when left on their funeral platforms, but skulls that were solid yet clear in a way she did not understand. The man with blue eyes carried several in a bag tied off on his pony. Sometimes her son did, and sometimes he didn’t. The skulls were very powerful, but their purpose eluded her.
The latest bout of recurring pain pushed aside such musings and returned her attention to the task at hand. She knelt, putting the pouch down to her right. She grimaced as another contraction rippled through her body. Despite the chill in the air, sweat ran down her forehead and along the chiseled lines f her face. It was so cold that small ice beads formed underneath her chin before the sweat could drop off.
Nahimana used her fist to punch a hole in the nearby thin ice. She cupped a handful of water and splashed it over her face, trying to distract herself from the pain in her womb. She began to hum to herself the tune her mother had taught her to focus her mind elsewhere and hold the pain at arm’s distance. She opened the pouch and pulled out a small flint knife that bad been her mother’s and her mother’s mother before her, through the long maternal line of the family. She pulled her garment up to her waist, spread her feet apart and waited, pressing her back against the bank for support, feeling the.train in her thighs. This was her first child. And although she had witnessed a few births and had consulted other women, the experience was novel to her.
He child came surprisingly easily. She used the flint knife to cut the umbilical, then reached forward to wash him with the river water when pain once more spiked through her abdomen, causing her to collapse back against the riverbank. the baby on the buffalo hide stared up at her with wide, The baby on the buffalo hide stared up at her with wide, against the cold riverbank.
Another child? She had not seen this. Or felt it. A shiver passed through her, some cold, mostly fear. She remembered the cut that had healed slowly. The pain that night eight moons ago. The warriors coming back saying not only had found no tracks of beast or man. But she knew dogs did not ark like that for nothing. She’d had a visitor.
She cried out as the pain came again and lingered for several moments before subsiding. The second baby would not be born. She reached down and flipped the edge of the buffalo robe over the silent child to protect him from the cold.
She strained with effort, trying to force the second child Out of her body. But to no avail. After almost a half-hour. The line was growing intolerable and blood soaked the pebbles and sand below her. She tried once more, and then collapsed sideways onto the pebbles, staring directly into the eyes of her first-born. She could feel the wet between her legs and. reaching down, drew back a hand covered with dark red blood.
She would die here. The thought angered her. She had always had the sight, and she had never foreseen this. She had visions of her son—, it was a son who stared back at her, and they had extended from his early childhood to his great victory. How could she die here and now?